The aim of this project is to analyze the factors that have contributed to improving the survival rate of children and adults in the recent and more distant past.

The project uses various designs, datasets and specific questions and is based on published statistical information included in electronic databases, micro-data and qualitative sources of information. The most important sources are statistical mortality data at the municipal level relating to a period of one and a half centuries and to a representative sample of about 75,000 children born in the Netherlands in the years 1812-1922 (HSN), a database containing information about fertility and mortality in the families of doctors practising in the years 1850-1930, and micro-databases containing information about vital events in the municipality of The Hague and in the provinces of Zeeland, Groningen, Drenthe and Gelderland. The main themes are social and religious differences in mortality rates, the influence of family circumstances on later life mortality, clustering of infant deaths, regional mortality differences and the role of medicine in the mortality decline.

Historical trends in the correlation of sibling deaths in infancy in The Netherlands. Biodemography and Social Biology 58 (2): 87-115. [pdf]

Bengtsson, T. & F. van Poppel (2011),

Socioeconomic inequalities in death from past to present: An introduction. Explorations in Economic History 48 (3): 343-356. [pdf]

Ekamper, P., F. van Poppel, C. van Duin & K. Mandemakers (2011),

Heat waves and cold spells and their effect on mortality: An analysis of micro-data for the Netherlands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Annales de Démographie Historique 48 (2): 55-104. [pdf]

Poppel, F. van (2011),

Trends in mortality and the evolution of the cause-of-death pattern in the Netherlands: 1850-2000. In: Th. Engelen, J.R. Shepherd & Y. Wen-shan (eds.), Death at the opposite ends of the Eurasian continent; mortality trends in Taiwan and the Netherlands 1850-1945. Amsterdam; Aksant, p. 17-44.

Schenk, N. & F. van Poppel (2011),

Social class, social mobility and mortality in the Netherlands, 1850-2004. Explorations in Economic History 48 (3): 401-417. [pdf]